CHAPTER VI.

POLLY ENCOUNTERS THE SERVANT QUESTION.


As time went on, Polly's first impression of the sisters was
unchanged. In fact, the girls all agreed in pronouncing Jessie "a
dear," and she was at once made to feel at home with the V, which
hospitably extended its arms to take her in. But with Katharine it
was a different matter. Critical of others, and constantly
studying the effect of all that she herself said or did, she was
rather a damper on the good times of the girls. Fortunately, she
usually scorned them as children, and spent much of her time with
her mates in the fashionable boarding-school at which she and her
sister were day pupils. And yet, she was not to blame for this
artificial side of her nature. At heart she was as true and sweet
a girl as Molly herself; but, bred up in the atmosphere of her
western city home where there was but one end in view, to struggle
up to the top of the social scale, if need be, over the bodies of
one's dearest friends, what wonder was it that her growth towards
womanhood was cramped by being forced out of its natural beauty
into the artificial lines of fashionable society. But it was not
yet too late to undo the harm, for a generous, warm heart lay
under her affected indifference and ambition; and her parents had
been wiser than they realized, when they sent their daughters East
to be educated, and left them in the care of the motherly woman
whose social position was too assured to have her feel the need
for striving, and who, like Mrs. Adams, believed that a woman's
highest life lay in her home and children, and that society was